Is Data Science Evil?

We've come a long way since the 70s, and computers today don't rape or mutilate people wearing black face masks. Instead, they enable the transition to a cashless economy, from which the poorest in society will be excluded (one cannot drop a credit card into a beggar's hat, and neither would anyone like to have their card swiped by a card reader on the street). AI systems assist judges in estimating the risk posed to society by particular offenders and decide on sentences or bail based on algorithms that are kept hidden from view. AI is at the forefront of environmental destruction, not only through the use of vast amounts of energy and carbon emissions for training computationally intensive models, but also by supporting research that will open up the Arctic to commercial exploitation, by enabling fossil-fuel companies to find new sources of oil, and by being one of the industries with the shortest time-to-obsolescence of its products. AI algorithms allow us to create new, terrifying weapons, come up with new types of terrorism, manipulate democratic processes, and endanger jobs on a global scale.